


The Storm Comes on Little Cat Feet

by OldToadWoman



Category: Early Edition, The Dead Zone
Genre: Canon Compliant, Chicago history, Crossover, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 19:18:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13130310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldToadWoman/pseuds/OldToadWoman
Summary: Once upon a time there was a guy, an average sort of guy living an average sort of life, until one day, through no action or desire on his part, this average guy was gifted with a window to the future and, with this foresight, the burden of righting wrongs before they even happened.His name was Gary Hobson. As it happened, his name was also Johnny Smith. This is the story of how Gary and Johnny almost met.





	The Storm Comes on Little Cat Feet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amilyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amilyn/gifts).



> Title misquoted from the poem "Fog" by Carl Sandburg.
>
>> The fog comes   
> on little cat feet.
>> 
>> It sits looking   
> over harbor and city   
> on silent haunches   
> and then moves on.  
> 
> 
>   
> TIMELINE:  
> This takes place several years after the final season of _Early Edition_ , roughly the end of season five of _The Dead Zone_ (before Walt left the show, but I'm strongly picturing season six J.J. in my head which muddles things), and in real life a few months before Marshall Field's officially changed its name to Macy's (2006). The storm described in this story did not actually happen, although similar storms have occurred and pedestrians in the city have been injured and even killed by falling glass from skyscraper windows so the plot is not quite as implausible as it may seem.
> 
> **Gigantic THANK YOU to [eluna](http://archiveofourown.org/users/eluna/works) for beta-reading a crossover of two unfamiliar shows. Above and beyond the call!**

* * *

Once upon a time there was a guy, an average sort of guy living an average sort of life, until one day, through no action or desire on his part, this average guy was gifted with a window to the future and, with this foresight, the burden of righting wrongs before they even happened.

His name was Gary Hobson. As it happened, his name was also Johnny Smith. This is the story of how Gary and Johnny almost met. 

* * *

"Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad."

Walt Bannerman is one of the good guys—one of the best, really. It's important that you know this up front so you don't worry overly much when I tell you that his first thought this particular morning is that it should be legal to kill your own children. Walt also has the body of a Greek god, but your narrator has vowed not to digress, as this is not that kind of story.

"Dad. Dad."

This is a family-friendly story with children in it.

"Dad. Dad. Dad."

As you may have noticed.

"Dad."

Walt Bannerman is a sheriff back in Maine and, as such, has the ability to awaken out of a dead sleep in a heartbeat. He can go from unconscious to fully dressed and running out the door in under three minutes if the situation calls for it.

"Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad."

Here in Chicago, Walt is no more nor less than an out-of-town tourist enjoying (theoretically) sleeping late on his vacation. The situation, most emphatically, does not call for this.

"Dad. Dad. Dad."

With a groan that is half growl and with vague thoughts of (as I warned you) the practicality of eating your young, Walt asks, "What?!"

"Are you awake?" Young J.J. asks, momentarily tentative in the face of his pre-coffee father.

Walt pulls his pillow over his head. Lions, he is sure he read somewhere, routinely kill their cubs. It keeps the pride more efficient or something. Or maybe cubs are just really annoying too.

"Dad. Dad. Dad."

"What?" Walt throws the pillow at J.J. before finally opening one eye. "What—do—you— _want_?"

"I want to go to the pool. Mom said I could go to the pool this morning." J.J. is already wearing swimming trunks and flip-flops and has a beach towel with the Chicago Bears logo drapped around his shoulders. The boy is not prepared to hear _no_ as an answer.

Walt now realizes with some consternation that his pillow is halfway across the room. "And?"

"Mom says I couldn't go to the pool without one of you with me."

"So take your mother." It is her own fault for promising the boy an early-morning swim while insisting on parental supervision. Walt thinks it's a stupid rule anyway. Does Sarah think the boy still needs them to hold his hand while he wades in the shallow end? However, Walt and Sarah have an agreement about not contradicting each other in front of J.J. so he holds his tongue.

"Mom isn't here," J.J. says.

Walt stretches out and yawns, his thin T-shirt riding high above his abs as your narrator struggles to remember that this is not that type of story. Walt takes stock of the situation, acknowledges that the other half of the bed is indeed empty, grabs Sarah Bannerman's currently unused pillow, and rolls back over on his stomach.

The bed isn't nearly as comfortable as their bed back home. For the price, the pillows should be stuffed with angel down or something. They are not. 

Walt has never had need to rent a hotel room back home in Cleaves Mills, but he stays overnight in Bangor occasionally when the job requires it and he's never paid this much before. It's not that he can't afford it, but the principle of the thing grates at him. He is sure he paid more in New York City, but he hadn't been that impressed with the Big Apple, either. Given the choice, Walt would pick a fishing cabin any day. 

Walt is completely unaware that he has started to drift off again when… "Dad!"

"Where _is_ your mother?"

"She went to the store."

"Why would she go to the store?" Walt mumbles fuzzily. "We're planning to eat out while we're here."

"Not the _grocery_ store. The _store_. For, like, women stuff."

Walt yawns while he considered this. "Tampons?"

"DAD!!" There are few terrors more haunting to a twelve-year-old boy. No one knows why this is so.

"Oh. Right. Shoes." And purses. And things. For whatever reason, a trip to Chicago is all about shopping. And he does remember, now that he really thinks about it, that Sarah had said she was going to do some shopping in the morning, before returning to join the rest of the family for museums and other suitably cultural activities in the afternoon. Walt trusts that Sarah is too practical to actually return with a seven-hundred-dollar purse, but she was bound and determined to go _look_ at them. He fails to see the appeal.

"Dad. _Mom said_ I could go swimming this morning while she was out shopping. I just have to have one of you with me."

Fortunately for Walt, and this is the first time this trip that he's considered this a good thing, they happen to have a spare parent on deck. "Go take John to the pool with you."

There is the briefest of hesitations before J.J. answers, "Johnny's already at the pool."

It is at this point, dear reader, that you will have deduced on your own that Walt Bannerman is a living saint, because he does not even _attempt_ to throttle the life out of J.J. He only takes a deep breath, counts to ten, and asks evenly, "J.J., why did you wake me up?"

"I don't want anyone to know that I'm with him," J.J. explains. "He's _embarrassing_."

That much is inarguably true. Walt had wanted to crawl under a rock when they had all checked into the hotel the day before. First, Johnny got a psychic vision off of the doorman, leaving Walt to unload the taxi while Johnny and the doorman had an intense conversation about the importance of having one's prostate checked regularly after a certain age. 

Walt is unsure about the actual purpose of a doorman. The ones he has seen thus far standing outside the nicer hotels downtown have an almost military bearing, standing guard in pseudo-naval uniforms. Walt cannot decide if their primary mandate is security or guest assistance or just standing there looking regal. This particular doorman in his rumpled ill-fitting uniform at this particular hotel on the outskirts of the city near the airport achieves none of those things.

Then, perhaps still distracted by the doorman, Johnny had responded to the desk clerk's standard query of "May I help you?" with "My girlfriend and her husband have a reservation under Bannerman. Would it be possible to add another guest to that?" Johnny later swore that he'd said _ex_ -girlfriend and clearly asked for a separate room, but Walt remains equally convinced that he had _not_ , and the desk clerk certainly hadn't heard "ex" either as she winked and told Sarah, "Oh, you _go_ , girl," and then upgraded them for free to a suite. 

The hotel's idea of a _suite_ is a little lacking—only a half-wall separates the bed from the sofa so it counts as a single room in his eyes, and the view from the 15th floor overlooks only the freeway and the nearby Hooters. He firmly declined Johnny's offer to book them rooms in a luxury hotel downtown with a view of the lake, because he still has a certain amount of pride, but a free upgrade is a different matter so he had no qualms about the slightly larger room with a king-size bed. They'd gotten some use out of it already after exiling Johnny and J.J. to the adjoining room for the night. 

Johnny Smith is so perfectly _average_ , on the outside at least, that Walt often literally forgets that Johnny's a millionaire. For his part, despite a psychic ability that you would think would provide him more empathy, Johnny often forgets that most people can't just casually hand over plastic rectangles without even asking the price first. 

He's not even terrible-looking, which Walt finds annoying. Walt works out, hard and regularly, to earn the body he has. Johnny's only exercise was the hockey of his youth and the physical therapy to recover from his car accident. These days, he doesn't even keep up the yoga routine Bruce made for him and yet he somehow maintains a body that is only slightly doughy. 

Walt tries to console himself that he has better hair, that _everyone_ has better hair than Johnny, but that might not be true for much longer. The Bannerman men have an unfortunate tendency toward receding hairlines and Walt casts a nervous eye in the mirror each morning. He tells himself repeatedly that he will not become one of _those_ men and that when the time comes he will just shave it all off while he still has his dignity. He knows from his time in the Marines that he can pull off the buzzed look.

He can't imagine Johnny going bald. Johnny's hair will migrate the other way. He will be one of those old men with hair flowing from their ears. His eyebrows will become sentient.

Walt is not jealous. It's just awkward having Sarah's ex remain so prominent in their lives.

However, having his wife's ex along on a family vacation is ominous as well as awkward. Ominous because Johnny had insisted on coming along after one of his psychic visions. It was one of the annoyingly vague ones. Johnny couldn't tell them what was going to go wrong, only that he had seen Sarah crying and sobbing, "If only Johnny had been here, maybe he could have done something to help." It isn't a lot to go on. 

Walt isn't particularly enamored with Chicago. They have their own museums and historical buildings—and, for that matter, overpriced shoes and purses—back east, and he doesn't understand why Sarah thinks J.J. needs to see the Midwest. However, he _had_ been looking forward to the time away from work—no emergency police calls in the middle of the night, no serial killers… okay, probably serial killers. Walt has no illusions about the Windy City. The point is that they are _Chicago's_ criminals and not _his_. It isn't often that Walt has the freedom to say, _Not my problem_. This should be a lovely family vacation, just the three of them. 

_And Johnny Smith makes four._

"Dad."

"Go. Just go. Johnny's already there. I don't care how embarrassing he is. He's your biological father and humiliating their children is what fathers _do_. Go. Enjoy your swim. Let me sleep."

"Dad, he's arguing with a cat." And in case Walt does not grasp the full mortification of this, J.J. adds, " _in public_."

Walt mulls this idea over in his head, and finally—just in case J.J. had been trying out some old school slang—he asks, "A _cat_? Like a kitty-cat?"

"Yes!"

"And he's _arguing_ with the kitty-cat?"

"Yes!"

Okay, even by Johnny Smith standards, that is pretty weird. "Is he at least winning the argument with the kitty-cat?"

J.J. releases his full pre-adolescent frustration in a long, plaintive whine as he answers, " _Noooo_."

"Okay." Walt stretches and finally surrenders any lingering hope of going back to sleep. " _This_ I gotta see."

* * *

Johnny Smith is sitting in a cheap plastic molded chair and, from his matching cheap plastic table, would not have a direct view of the pool even if his attention weren't distracted by the cat. And he is clearly very distracted by the cat.

It is an actual cat and Walt can't quite rationalize it with its surroundings. Walt already feels a touch claustrophobic in the warmth not meant for fully-clothed humans, let alone a fully-furred cat.

Walt gives his son a few points back for recognizing that Johnny would not have met Sarah's definition of adult supervision. Then he notices the sign that says children under 16 must have an adult. Walt thinks it's a stupid rule, but J.J. still gets points for being a law-abiding citizen.

"I brought my dad," J.J. announces to an elderly woman in a housekeeping smock who is restocking the towels. She nods in acknowledgement. Her stern expression still echoes the lecture she had given him earlier. Walt takes all of J.J.'s points back and wonders if there might be coffee in the lobby. They should have gone to the lobby first.

The only other adult present is a woman wrapped in a towel, lying on a folding chaise. She has earbuds in, to listen to music or possibly just to muffle the screams of her own children, and despite being indoors she has on a pair of sunglasses. Walt suspects she is asleep. He is correct.

Walt is fairly sure Chicago doesn't get any more, or even as much, snow as Maine, but he always pictured it covered in snow of varying shades of gray and yellow. Today it is beautiful and sunny, but Walt only knows this from glancing out the window at the freeway before leaving their room. The pool is entirely enclosed and windowless although the far wall is papered with a life-size photograph of a tropical beach scene as if that were their view. The illusion is foiled somewhat by the smell of chloramines and the high-pitched squeals echoing off the walls.

The cat paces the length of the plastic table, head-butts Johnny, and then twists its body in a living U-turn and pets itself across Johnny's face. It is adorable. Johnny clearly doesn't think so. "Will you stop that?!" That cat flicks its tail, turns again, and when Johnny tries to lean out of reach, stands up on its hind feet and hits Johnny in the chest with both forepaws. "Well, what do you want _me_ to do about it? Do I look like I have superpowers?" The cat _mrrhs_ and then flops down on the patio table in front of Johnny. 

Johnny sighs and pets the cat, all the while continuing to mutter things like, "Could you at least be a _little_ more specific?"

"No cats," the elderly woman repeats for at least the fourth time without much inflection. She actually likes cats and tried to pet the kitty when she saw it in the hallway earlier, but Security tried to grab it and scared it off and she can't pet it now, not in front of the guests. Hotel guests must not be encouraged to break rules.

"It's not my cat," Johnny says.

"Hi, John." Walt drags up a chair, which scrapes unpleasantly on the painted cement floor, and sits down at the next table. It isn't a perfect view, but he can see most of the pool from here. The noise had made him think at first that there must be twenty children already in the pool, but there are only three. He motions to J.J. to go ahead. The boy runs into the pool area and even Johnny has just enough awareness to join Walt in yelling after him, "No running!"

J.J. slows to a half-run a few steps before cannonballing into the pool. The woman on the chaise lounge is caught in the splash zone and startles awake screaming, "Michael!"

Another child yells, "It wasn't me!" just as J.J. yells, "Sorry!"

Walt feels a twinge of guilt, but Johnny's attention immediately returns to the cat.

It is an orange tabby cat. It is taking advantage of the belly scritches, but it is still flicking the very tip of its tail in mild annoyance. "Are you going to introduce me to your cat?" Walt asks with a smirk.

"He is not my cat," Johnny repeats.

"How did he even get in here?" Walt asks, glancing around for a likely means of entry and finding none.

"I have no idea—and there is nothing I can do about the weather." The last is directed at the cat.

"John." Walt takes a deep breath and tries to figure out how to ask the question. "Is the cat actually talking to you?"

"Kinda."

"The cat is _kinda_ talking to you? Do you hear a voice?" Johnny sees things that aren't there all the time. Walt isn't sure why hearing things would be creepier, but it is.

"No. I can _see_ words, though." Johnny frowns at the cat while rubbing its ear and then blurts out, "That's not helpful!"

"You can see words. Like a cartoon bubble?" Walt glances at the striped orange cat again. "Tell me his name isn't Garfield."

"I don't know what his name is. And, no, I do not see thought bubbles over his head. I see words in the newspaper." He does. The words hover in the air larger than life. The newspaper itself is translucent, but the ink fills every degree of his field of vision. It's not his normal sort that pulls him all the way into another reality. He remains fully rooted in the present, but a political column blocks his view of Walt and he flicks it aside. He is not interested in a debate over the likelihood of Republicans losing seats in the next midterm elections and whether President George W. Bush is to blame. (The only political stories that interest Johnny involve Greg Stillson, who may or may not bring about the apocalypse at some point down the line.)

Walt resists the urge to ask if Johnny is talking about the funny pages. Walt is classy like that. (If Bruce were here, there would have been more trash-talking.) "The newspaper?"

" _The Chicago Sun Times_. The day after tomorrow. A tornado is going to hit downtown. Several people are going to be killed. Hundreds injured." Johnny closes his eyes and rubs his forehead.

"A tornado in downtown Chicago the day after tomorrow?" Walt doesn't know what to make of this. For some reason he has trouble picturing a tornado amid the tall buildings. Don't they need a lot of open space to build up steam? Or does he just imagine they do because they always make him think of Dorothy in the middle of Kansas? 

Johnny shakes his head. "The _newspaper_ is from the day after tomorrow. That means the tornado hits _tomorrow_. The cat keeps giving me visions of the newspaper summing up the damage the next day."

"You can't stop a tornado, John. We both already know that."

"Tell _him_ that." The cat jumps off the table and follows the elderly housekeeper out the door with a final swish of its tail. They will never see it again. Its work here is done.

* * *

You, dear reader, are expressly forbidden from hating Sarah Bannerman. You will be understandably tempted.

Sarah is the lovely wife of the handsome sheriff in the picturesque town of Cleaves Mills in the great state of Maine, while simultaneously occupying the pedestal that is The One True Love of Johnny Smith. (Johnny needs to get out more.) Sarah, in truth, has lived through tragedy and is fully worthy of your sympathy, and she has done so with courage and grace and is therefore fully worthy of your respect as well. So at least _try_ not to hate her.

Sarah Bannerman is the anthropomorphism of perkiness. She is the perky pixie. If she woke up one morning with her ears suddenly pointed and sneezing glitter, absolutely no one would be surprised other than Sarah. It's just possible that Walt is into that sort of thing. Don't judge. (Johnny has some other issues altogether, but he isn't really ready to deal with them at this point in our story, so just let it go.) 

To recap, Sarah and her then-fiancee Johnny Smith had the perfect life until he was in a car accident which left him in a coma. The doctors didn't expect him to awaken, let alone recover. She gave birth to their son, fell in love with and married Walt, and generally got on with her life. Six years later Johnny woke up _changed_. More years flew by and Sarah gradually settled into a life where a husband and son and white picket fence and psychic ex-fiancé seem perfectly normal to her now. The thought that bringing Johnny along on a family vacation might be odd doesn't even cross her mind.

Sarah returns from her shopping trip with a few boxes of Frango mints, but no seven-hundred dollar purses. There were, to Sarah's confusion, protestors outside the department store who seemed very upset that its name would soon change. Being a civic-minded and politically-active person, Sarah had politely listened to them, but as far as she can tell, the name change is literally the only thing they are angry about. Sarah does not understand that being angry is, in itself, a time-honored Chicago tradition and it is not necessary to have a reason beyond _they changed something and I don't like it_.

In addition to the chocolate, she has an armload of brochures of things to do. So much to see. How to prioritize? Sarah is giddy with the possibilities. The Field Museum for the dinosaur fossils, definitely. J.J. will love that. He'll complain about the Art Institute—so will Walt and Johnny, probably—but how could you pass up the chance to see _Sunday in the Park_ or _American Gothic_ with your own eyes? 

Sarah experiences her own non-psychic vision of Johnny touching things and setting off alarms and wonders if the Art Institute should just be a mother-son outing. Johnny can touch anything he wants at the Museum of Science and Industry. She thinks they can pass on both of the zoos. J.J. would like them, but there isn't enough time for everything. The architectural river cruise looks interesting. She wants to see the Stained Glass Museum at Navy Pier, and that will give J.J. a chance to play in the nearby fun house. And the Chicago Botanic Garden looks absolutely gorgeous, but it's actually well north of the city, and that would take up more time than she's sure they can spare.

Sarah thinks that today's agenda is pretty simple, though. First the Field Museum and the fossils and then a walk through downtown to the Sears Tower Skydeck for a view of the city. Sarah wrongly assumes the museum is named for the football field next door and never associates it with department store she has just left. Had she bothered to read up on local history, she would have only come to the conclusion that Marshall Field was a racist jerk, because he totally was, and she would not have mourned his store being bought out by a New York chain. She further has no idea how lucky she is to be visiting the city a full three years before the Sears Tower will be renamed, once again sending the city into years of denial and complaints. (It has been fifteen years since Comiskey Park was torn down and not one true Chicagoan will dare speak the name of its replacement.) 

They might be able to get back to the Cultural Center before it closes so she can show them the lovely Tiffany dome and perhaps pick up a few more brochures. And then over to Millennium Park to show J.J. the fountain with the lights and this interesting thing the brochures call "Cloud Gate" but which looks like a giant blob of metal. The tour guide at the Cultural Center told her you can walk underneath it and see dozens of reflections of yourself and that children just love it.

She finds her fellas, as expected, by the pool. Not as expected, none of them are in the water. Walt and Johnny are fully dressed, and J.J., though damp and wrapped in a towel, has also joined them at a small, plastic table where they are all staring at a map of downtown. Everything in the room is an unpleasant off-white that does not seem intentional, but instead looks grubby and inadequately cleaned. No one can appreciate that housekeeping truly does their best, but the rough plastic tables and chairs stubbornly cling to every molecule of grime.

"So the deaths are all mainly here?" Walt asks, waving at the map. Sarah is not surprised. Johnny had foreseen a disaster of some kind. She could not recall him ever being wrong.

"I _think_ so. The newspaper article was hard to understand. It used words that aren't on the map. Minor injuries in River North and the Mag Mile. 'River North' just has to mean north of the river, right? What's 'Mag Mile?'" Johnny looks frustrated. This is honestly Johnny Smith's default expression. He is generally either confused or angry, except on those days where he has happily avoided human contact. 

Sarah stubbornly maintains a more optimistic view and only registers that Johnny doesn't seem to have gotten to the root of his vision yet. She reaches over him and taps the map. "Magnificent Mile. Here. It's the shopping district on Michigan Ave north of the river. What's going on?"

Walt stands up and gives her a kiss hello on the cheek. Johnny barely even glances up from the map. "John says there's going to be a wind storm tomorrow," Walt says.

"A tornado." Johnny is still squinting at the labels at the map. "Okay, so only injuries here. The deaths are mainly along the lakefront and here. I think. The 'Loop' is all inside this area of the elevated train, right? Where's the 'Bean?' There are no beans on this map."

"A tornado?" Sarah repeats. "Oh, not again."

"Or a gustnado," Walt says. "It sounds like the worst is limited to just a few areas and then it blows out pretty quickly. It's barely an F1."

Walt's using his reassuring husband voice and rubbing her shoulder. That alone would have warned Sarah it was more serious. As it is, Johnny hasn't noticed the don't-scare-the-women-folk tone and adds, "No, it's a solid F2, possibly even peaking at F3 for a few seconds."

The tornado that nearly killed them all near the lake one summer had been an F4, but that was nowhere near high rises. Suddenly all those tall buildings look a lot less solid to Sarah. She had flown here with her _family_ , cheerfully confident that whatever problem Johnny foresaw could be prevented. She is unsettled to find their enemy is _weather_. "But Chicago's used to wind," she suggests in an attempt to reassure herself. "The buildings have to be designed to withstand high winds, right?"

"Not this high. And not these patterns. A tornado forms a strong updraft. It's like a giant vacuum cleaner. It won't bring any of the buildings down, but there will still be deaths. Boats on the water. People hit by falling signs. And the glass." Johnny shudders and Sarah realizes she does too. She can imagine hundreds of pedestrians beneath all those tall glass buildings. "At least four people are blown right out high rise windows. And a baby in a stroller is going airborne near the Bean, only I don't even know what a Bean is."

"Oh!" Sarah pulls out the brochures she collected that morning. "It's 'Cloud Gate.'"

"What?"

"It's a big art installation in the park. See." She hands him the brochure of a large metal blob polished to a mirrored finish.

"Why would they call it—?" Johnny begins to ask before taking in the shape. "Oh. Okay, I see. Bean. Somewhere close to here a baby in a stroller will be caught by the wind and will come crashing down on the sidewalk clear across the street."

"It shouldn't be hard to clear that area of strollers," Walt says. "Just make an announcement shortly beforehand that, due to high winds, everyone, especially people with small children, should take shelter."

"We'll never get the officials to close down tourist attractions based on my vision," Johnny says.

"John, did I say anything about the officials? We make an announcement. We don't even need to mention tornadoes or psychics. You just give people orders in a loud clear voice and most people will do what you say."

Johnny frowns and Sarah pats Walt on the arm. "You should probably be the one to do that, honey. You have a knack for it."

"Dad, can't you just call the mayor and tell him they have to get everyone to safety? Johnny's visions are _always_ true." It's so sweet the way that J.J. looks up to both his dads, Sarah thinks with a wan smile. 

A strange premonition of her own tells her that all too soon J.J. will outgrow his blind faith in his parents. He's still small for his age, but his once pale hair that so strongly resembled Johnny is darkening toward's Sarah's brown coloring, and he's starting to notice girls. The rebellious teen years are just over the horizon.

Walt shakes his head. "They don't know John here, J.J. They won't believe he can see the future. And a tornado has never hit downtown Chicago before. Most people don't even believe that it's possible."

"But you're the sheriff! They'll believe _you_."

"I'm _a_ sheriff, J.J. Back in Maine. That really doesn't mean anything here." He looks at Sarah and adds, "I already made a few phone calls. I have limited contacts out here, but we've got a handful of first responders promising to be on alert, and one guy at the weather bureau promised to watch the storm carefully. As it is, though, the weather bureau had already issued a severe weather alert even before Johnny's vision. People just don't pay that much attention here unless it's a winter storm."

"I even called Reverend Purdy," Johnny adds. "Thanks to him, we have one yacht club that's voluntarily keeping its members grounded tomorrow."

"Okay, so that's a start. What time tomorrow does this happen?" Sarah slides the map away from Johnny and stares at it herself. "You said people die in the Loop. Do you know where in the Loop? It's a pretty big area."

"At 3:57PM tomorrow. And I thought the Loop was just this bit here."

"Well, mostly, but the lady at the Cultural Center said it's considered the Loop all the way to the river, even outside the train loop."

"We can't stop a tornado," Johnny mutters again. "What's the point of seeing things I can't stop."

"We can clear people off the street and away from windows. We're going to save as many people as we can." In a strange way, Sarah feels exhilarated. They're going to save people and she and J.J. are going to help. 

Sarah remains enthusiastic, but being a hero turns out to be a lot more boring than J.J. had expected. His dad and Johnny each make more phone calls and they all stare at maps until finally his mom announces there is nothing else they can do until the next day. 

"We'll just have to split up and warn as many people as we can," Sarah announces.

It is J.J. himself who comes up with the very best idea. He can't believe none of the grown-ups thought of it. "What about Dana Bright?"

"What _about_ Dana Bright?" his dad asks.

Dana Bright used to be a newspaper reporter just like Lois Lane and now she works for a television station. J.J. has total faith that getting the truth out to a reporter will solve everything. "She can tell _everybody_ all at once." 

"Dana Bright works out of Boston," Johnny says. "Her station isn't going to carry a story about what a psychic thinks in Chicago, and no one here would see it anyway."

J.J. rolls his eyes at them, because sometimes old people can be _so_ dumb. "They have a _web page_ ," he explains. "She doesn't have to broadcast the story on the news. She just needs to make a video for the Internet."

The adults do not leap onto J.J.'s brilliant idea with the enthusiasm that he feels it merits, but they can be forgiven their lack of technical prescience. There is a new thing called YouTube that has been around for just over a year now, but the phrase _viral video_ hasn't quite worked its way into the general public's vocabulary yet. J.J. does not understand that the Internet has not always been there. He hasn't lived through previous fads crashing and burning, and he cannot grasp how his parents don't see the future when it's staring them in the face.

This is especially frustrating when one of his parents can _literally see the future_ , but Johnny's visions are rarely very optimistic.

"Hey, it couldn't hurt," his mom says with a shrug. "I'm not sure many people in Chicago would visit a website for a Boston TV station, but it's worth a try."

It is Johnny who finally realizes what J.J. is getting at. "No, this could work. Dana knows us. If we promise her this story will pay off, we might talk her into really selling this."

Johnny calls Dana Bright right there and then and tells her everything. They cannot hear all of her side of the conversation, but snatches come through. "Are you sure?… my reputation… I don't do tabloid stories… accused of sensationalism… if you're wrong… I won't misquote… Are you _sure_?"

At their end, Johnny is insistent. "Absolutely. You'll have the scoop. Hey, the more sensational the better. Seriously, this is one time where I'd say a little fear mongering would be a good thing. I'm not wrong. You don't have to _mis_ -quote anyone, just, y'know, creative context. Lives are at stake, Dana. Make sure you mention the time, 3:57PM. You're the best."

Within an hour the story is up on the Boston website: "The Windy City of Death: Psychic Predicts Deadly Storm for Chicago." 

Dana Bright is nearly unrecognizable. The wild auburn tresses she wore during her newspaper reporter days have been wrestled into a straight blonde bob cut just above her shoulders. There is no wind in the studio, but if there were her hair would still not move. Without any conscious jealousy towards Johnny's ex, Sarah wonders how she herself would look if she grew her pixie-cut out into a bob, unaware that Walt is simultaneously thinking that Dana looks awful. 

She's wearing a bright turquoise blazer that looks like it's straight out of the '80s. Dana hates it with a fiery passion, not least because it is the reason she was forced to change her hair color. According to her producer, auburn and turquoise do not go together. She sits behind a large white plastic desk with huge turquoise plastic letters mounted on it spelling out the station's call sign.

As she introduces the video, Dana comes across as light and mocking. "Can Cleaves Mills psychic Johnny Smith _really_ predict the weather? Smith's alleged psychic gifts have helped out local law enforcement in the past, but do you believe his latest claim that he can predict a deadly storm due to hit Chicago tomorrow afternoon? Well, let's hear what the experts have to say." 

Choppily-edited video follows. Talking heads discuss tornadoes in general and the statistical likelihood of a direct hit to a major city. They show photos of historic tornado damage and Sarah kind of freaks out a little. 

Chicago weatherman Tom Skilling adds, "Historically, on May 6, 1876, an F3 tornado (wind speeds of 158-206 m.p.h.) struck downtown Chicago in what would become the Loop, killing two people. More recently, at 5:00PM on March 4, 1961, an F2 tornado (113 to 157 m.p.h.) traversed the south side of Chicago, crossing out into Lake Michigan near the University of Chicago. The twister damaged 3,000 homes and caused one fatality and 115 injuries. Had the storm been much stronger, it would have been a major killer. No area of the Midwest is immune from tornadoes… Bathrooms, interestingly, are uniquely reinforced, particularly if they use metal plumbing, because you have all these pipes in the wall. It’s interesting that studies have shown that after the fact, bathrooms and closets will survive more than larger rooms in the house. A little advance planning and also putting yourself in a position where you won’t be hit by debris or crushed if something comes down on you, because sadly that’s the way most people perish in storms or are injured." 

"Cool! She's even got the local weatherman on your side!" J.J. says.

"Actually," Johnny says, wincing slightly, "I think she kind of edited that out of old footage. He's not talking about my visions, he's talking about tornadoes in general."

The video returns to Dana Bright behind the giant news desk. The shot has zoomed out to include a man with even stupider hair and a matching turquoise blazer. He laughs and says, "Well, if this Smith guy turns out to be right, maybe we can finally replace Bob."

"Funny," a guy in front of a weather map says. "Really funny." Bob is the only one who doesn't have to wear the ugly blazer because it adversely affects the chroma key.

"So, you don't buy it?" Dana asks. "You don't believe there will be a tornado at 3:57PM tomorrow afternoon in downtown Chicago?"

"If a tornado hits downtown Chicago at 3:57PM tomorrow, I will personally offer Johnny Smith my job."

Dana Bright laughs. "Well, I don't believe it either. But I'll admit one thing. Having survived that storm back in 2003, if _I_ were in Chicago, I'd be somewhere safe indoors at 3:57 PM tomorrow _just in case_." The others laugh and the video ends. There is a text article with it that his mom reads, but to J.J. it looks long and boring and he only gives it a quick glance.

"That's terrible," J.J. says. "She made fun of you! She was supposed to help!"

"Her producers weren't going to let her run with the story as a serious piece," Johnny explains. "But this isn't bad. She got the word out there and they hit the time more than once. If it helps keep even a handful of people out of harm's way, it's worth it."

"And this article is even better," his mom says. "She keeps quoting this Skilling guy as a big expert. I feel a little sorry for him, actually. I think he was trying to say that he didn't believe the prediction, but they kept writing it up as, 'Skilling agrees that Smith's vision of death and mayhem is "not altogether impossible."' Remind me to stay on Dana's good side. In the meantime, I'm forwarding this to everyone I know."

* * *

So they all end up going to the dinosaur museum that afternoon, which is kind of weird, knowing there is going to be a tornado the next day, but even Johnny says that they might as well do some sightseeing while they can. The museum is supposed to be famous for having the skeleton of a giant T-Rex. It's named Sue, not because it's a girl, but because a woman named Sue had dug it up and the T-Rex had been named after her. There is a big brachiosaurus skeleton outside that J.J. thinks is awesome until he gets closer and realizes it's a fake, sculpted out of metal and not a real skeleton at all.

"The ones _inside_ the museum are real," Sarah insists. Except when they get inside the museum J.J. is disappointed because there is Sue, but right next to her are a couple of elephants—real ones, but dead, like stuffed—and Sue looks kind of small next to the elephants. He'd expected a T-Rex to be bigger than that. 

When a paleontologist says that an adult tyrannosaur would have weighed "almost as much" as an African elephant, they are trying to impress upon you the horror of a carnivore so much larger than you. Yet the archetypal tyrannosaur that lives in the public's collective psyche is Godzilla. Any tyrannosaur that cannot lift up a semi-truck in its jaws (i.e. all of them) is bound to be a slight letdown. 

And then J.J. reads the plaque and finds out her head isn't even real. The real head was too heavy to put on top so they'd made a fake one.

"The real skull is upstairs," Walt says. "Come on, let's check it out."

It doesn't even seem worth the effort of climbing the stairs, but when they get up there, it kind of is, because the real head isn't like the fake one at all. It's all misshapen and gross from having been squished as a fossil for millions of years. "And how cool is that," Johnny agrees as J.J. perks up.

And the whole way, Sarah keeps just sort of happening to get into conversations with random people: "Did you hear about that storm that's supposed to hit downtown tomorrow afternoon? Freaky, right?" But almost everyone ignores her or tells her they don't believe it, and a couple of people even tell her it isn't possible because all the tall buildings would halt a tornado in its tracks. So she quotes Tom Skilling back at them and maybe he is a big deal around here after all because a few people actually pay attention to that.

They wander through an area with a bunch of fossils such as sea creatures squished like dried leaves and that's cool at first, but boring after a while—like seriously boring, not just from the perspective of a pre-adolescent boy who was promised a fun day. Display after display of textured rocks with informational placards that you wouldn't have time to read, even if you wanted to, because the line of people behind you is also anxious to see the cool stuff _they_ were promised, each of them already beginning to suspect that the entire exhibit might only be rocks and informational placards that they aren't going to read either.

And then they turn a corner and find the rest of the dinosaurs and _that_ is _finally_ _bleeping_ awesome. Some of them are small, but some are bigger than Sue and there's a Stegosaurus and everything. And they are all _right there_ , right in front of them where you could easily just lean over the rail and _touch_ them. J.J. knows you probably shouldn't. (You totally shouldn't.) But you _could_.

"Johnny!" J.J. says breathlessly. "Do you think it would work?"

"Oh, don't," Sarah warns. Why do moms have to be such spoilsports?

"I don't know," Johnny says. "They're just fossils, not the original bones. I probably wouldn't see anything."

"But you could try!"

"Don't you dare!" Sarah hisses.

"Look," Walt says, pointing at a big patch of rock outside the railing with a big dinosaur footprint in it. "You're allowed to touch this one."

"Do it!" J.J. says.

His mom sighs dramatically and mutters, "Don't say I didn't warn you."

"Come on, John," Walt says. "You can't wimp out now."

Johnny reaches down and touches the footprint— _{{ he can feel the solid rock, briefly cool on his hand and then cold, so much colder, as his digits sink into the mud, he hates mud and he hates the rain, he stomps through the mud, shaking the rainwater off of his feathers, stupid mud, he squawks once in annoyance and then freezes as the raindrops inexplicably stop, confusion, raindrops are still splashing nearby on either side as if something is shielding him only from above, the paleontologists were wrong, this one is slightly larger than an African elephant }}_ —and then almost immediately straightens back up and walks away quickly.

"John?" Walt calls after him.

"You can't say I didn't warn you," Sarah repeats.

When they get to the giant mammal skeletons, there are mastodons and wooly mammoths and, coolest of all, a giant sloth skeleton as big as an elephant itself. For real, _giant sloth_. Your brain is prepared for a wooly mammoth to be, well, mammoth. A giant sloth looming over you is something else altogether. Yet despite J.J.'s wheedling, Johnny won't even _try_ to touch any of them.

There is a bunch of other stuff at the museum too besides dead animals, but it is all cultural and boring, so while Sarah takes _forever_ oohing and aahing over a bunch of rocks in the gemstone exhibit, Johnny and Walt and J.J. go outside and get hot dogs and look at the boats and garbage floating in the lake. 

Chicago-style hot dogs are just hot dogs. All three of them are vaguely disappointed, Johnny—distracted as always—less so. They had expected the hot dogs themselves to be different somehow, but it's only the toppings that are different from a normal hot dog and those toppings make no sense to any of them. Walt, the good dad, does his best to pretend he is not disappointed and nobly eats the extra vegetables off of J.J.'s dog. Even he cannot comprehend why anyone would put tomato and cucumber slices on a hot dog, but he does not say so aloud. Johnny at least takes one for the team and goes back to the stand to get J.J. ketchup. The vendor has generously provided ketchup packets in a small bucket next to the napkin dispenser where heathens can adulterate their dogs without him having to feel morally responsible. 

The lake is calm with no sign of the predicted storm. Gentle waves lap the murky water against the concrete, trapping the floating garbage in the eddy formed as the concrete makes a corner where the shoreline meets the peninsula leading to the aquarium. (Sarah has spared them a visit to the aquarium and the planetarium due to a lack of time.) The trash is varied and for the most part unidentifiable, but J.J. spots the legendary _Chicago Whitefish_ and snickers at the floating condom. Walt sighs and Johnny only says, "Don't… don't point that out to your mother."

They buy tickets to go on a boat to Navy Pier and Sarah is kind of annoyed when they tell her because she is planning to go somewhere else next, but then they explain the boat is a "water taxi" that is going to take them right to the stained glass museum that she wants to see so she is okay with it. It's pretty awesome—the boat ride, not the stained glass museum, at least so a bunch of uncultured swine think. Your narrator is entirely with Sarah on this one. The stained glass is lovely. After they finally drag her away from that, they take a taxi—a regular, non-water taxi—to the Sears Tower. The cab driver is kind of scary the way he's so loud and swears a lot and his mom gets annoyed and tells him that her twelve-year-old son is in the taxi, but he doesn't seem to catch her drift because he just looks at J.J. and says, "Hey there, sport. First time in Chicago? It's a _bleeping_ great city, ain't it?" Of course, he doesn't actually say _bleeping_ , but your narrator will remind you that this is not that kind of story.

J.J. giggles and Sarah says, "Language!" but the cabbie just says, "Huh? What are you people from the little house on the _bleeping_ prairie or what?" and then J.J.'s _dad_ says a word that once got Jason Federman a whole week's detention and Sarah says, "Walter!" and that means she is _mad_ because _no one_ calls J.J.'s dad _Walter_ , not ever, but Walt just says, "When in Rome."

By the time they get up to the Skydeck it's dark out, but that is extra cool because you can see all the lights of the city below you and J.J. had never seen anything like it in his life. Even Johnny is impressed. But then Johnny touches one of the windows and goes a little quiet and weird—

_{{A group of coworkers are clustered together on a smoke break in a side alley as glass rains down from above. A homeless man on a main street meets the same fate. An elderly woman is hit in the head by a piece of flying debris. Office workers sitting at a conference table look up as the huge plate window begins to vibrate with the wind. Suddenly it gives and the man in front of the PowerPoint display is sucked out into the air, twenty stories above the ground.}}_

—which is something Johnny does a lot so it's almost normal, except this time J.J. knows what it's about.

"It's going to be really bad, isn't it?" the boy asks quietly.

"Naw, I've been through worse myself." Johnny tries to make it sound like it was no big deal, but he doesn't really lie very well. It's not even a lie, not really. The tornado that hit near the lake _was_ stronger. This is going to be deadlier. It's all about the numbers. More people. More debris. If there's just some way to make _that_ guy stand two meters to the left and convince _that_ guy to leave the conference room two minutes sooner…

"And we're warning everyone," Sarah adds, rubbing her son's shoulder in what she thinks is a reassuring manner, "so it will be okay."

Except they've been warning people all day and Johnny still saw something bad when he touched the window just now. Johnny doesn't say so, but Sarah can tell.

Johnny probably thinks he smiles as he says, "It's fine." Yet Sarah recognizes it for the classic Johnny Smith wince. She knows he's had a vision and a bad one.

"Show me." Sarah points to the north-facing window next to them. Instead he walks to the window facing the lake.

"Down there," he says. "It blows out quickly. The worst is just…" He gestures vaguely to an area of several blocks. It doesn't seem that big from their vantage point atop the tallest office building, but, "There are just so many people."

Johnny "smiles" again. It makes her a little sick to her stomach. This is worse than she'd thought.

They go out for classic Chicago pizza that night, but Sarah has no appetite for it. J.J. wants to know what is so special about the pizza that makes it _Chicago_ style. It is his opinion that Pepperoni Palace back home is better. Walt and Johnny both agree with him and Sarah doesn't have the energy to argue. None of them seem to be aware that when they ordered the thin-crust pizza they were actually getting _New York_ style. They will leave the city never having tasted a Giordano's stuffed pizza and without even being aware of what they've missed.

They all go to bed that night out of sorts and fretful and awake the next morning in similarly poor spirits.

The way J.J. complains, you would think she is dragging him to the dentist instead of taking him to a nationally-renowned art museum, but Sarah isn't going to back down on this. Johnny and Walt are going to canvas the area. Walt is looking around for potential impromptu storm shelters and evacuation routes and Johnny is just hoping to _see_ something useful. The Art Institute is right between the lake and the Loop, just a few blocks down from the park where Johnny had foreseen tragedy for the baby in the stroller. They are perfectly situated to warn as many people as possible and still have plenty of time to seek shelter themselves. And if her son experiences a little culture along the way, it will _not_ , protests aside, kill him.

They can save the world after lunch.

* * *

The day of the twister, everyone is a bit cranky. They visit the Art Institute in the morning, but none of them, not even Sarah, can relax enough to actually enjoy it. They make small talk about the big storm due that afternoon and a handful of other tourists thank them for the advice and agree to seek shelter. The locals just scoff though and a security guard starts to casually follow them around the museum.

Walt's plan is to send J.J. and Sarah back to the hotel where they will be safe. Johnny has assured Walt that the hotel is completely outside the damage zone. Johnny and Walt will stay downtown, split up if they have to, and warn as many as people as possible while staying close enough to shelter to avoid a personal tragedy. 

Can Walt's wife and son let it be that simple just for once? Of course not. They both insist on helping, to the point of making it clear that they will go out on their own if they aren't included.

The idea of Sarah and J.J. out there without him makes Walt more than a little uneasy. J.J. is a smart kid as kids go, but he is still a _kid_. Given the right distraction, he isn't sure he fully trusts J.J. not to step in front of a speeding taxi. And the city is full of both distractions and speeding taxis. As for Sarah, well, okay, that is plain old chauvinism on Walt's part. Walt knows that she is smart and self-sufficient and perfectly capable of taking care of herself, but she is also _his Sarah_. To him, she is a fairy-tale princess or an anime heroine or possibly something even more ethereal. Walt wants her bundled up somewhere safe.

"Yeah, no," Sarah says firmly.

Her words are fairly meaningless, but the flash in her eyes silence any attempt Walt might make at arguing with her. His wife is preciously adorable and completely terrifying at the same time. It is one of her superpowers. He half believes she really does have fairy blood in her veins from some forgotten part of the family tree.

So they all agree to be reasonable about it and somehow that means that Walt and J.J. are on one team while Sarah goes off with her psychic boyfriend. Psychic _ex_ -boyfriend, Walt tries to correct himself, but the thought is not entirely banished. Johnny Smith will never really be _ex_ -anything in their lives. 

Walt takes J.J. to the north end of Grant Park looking for that baby stroller that Johnny had warned them about. It seems the safest area to take his son. A wide open spot a fair distance from the glass and debris they all fear, but close enough to the museum that they can head back inside before the storm hits.

Johnny and Sarah are going to the heart of the Loop. As unsettled as Walt is with that idea, he has a reasonable amount of faith in Johnny's visions and knows he can count on him to find a safe place to seek shelter when the time comes.

"We need to clear this area," he tells everyone they pass. "We have rough weather coming in within the next two hours. You want to be indoors and away from doors and windows. Storm on the way, folks. Indoors." 

Before law enforcement, Walt Bannerman had been Marine Corps and among the useful lessons learned in those days is how to lead. Too many people, even Marines that he'd known, thought giving an order meant shouting at people. But the natural leaders who rose in the ranks didn't bark; they simply told you what to do and you just did it. They weren't in charge because they outranked you, they outranked you because they took charge.

Walt Bannerman made sheriff because people do what he tells them to do and he rarely has to show them his badge to back that up. That is particularly fortunate, since a sheriff's star isn't going to do him a lot of good here. 

The crowd parts, thins—but to his chagrin, never quite goes away. New people arrive. Some only start to leave, but look at the clear sky and poll opinions amongst themselves and wander back to their original locations. A stubborn handful ignore him entirely.

They arrive at "the Bean" and he allows J.J. to walk under and around it, even takes pictures of him pointing out his reflections in its polished surface.

"Look, Dad, look! There and there and up there!" J.J. counts his reflections, each distorted, some upside down.

"That's cool, J.J.," he says. He wants to mean it, but doesn't quite. He is distracted and if the worst of Johnny's vision happens, then Walt doesn't think they'll enjoy reminiscing over the day's tourist photos.

J.J. suddenly tires of the novelty of giant modern art. With barely a pause for breath after "This is cool! Take my picture!" he asks, "Shouldn't we be doing something? You've got to get these people out of here."

Walt checks the time again. "We've got about an hour to go. I clear these people out and more just come back. And John only saw one fatality here, the kid in the stroller. Just keep your eye out for strollers."

Even as he says it, he spots a couple with a stroller. It is ridiculously oversized, the kind Walt thinks of as the stretch limo style. Possibly a two-seater, but currently holding only one child and all of his cargo.

It's the cargo that gets you. When J.J. was little, Sarah had gone all hippie Earth mom and strapped the baby to her body with this sling thing. And yet they'd still end up dragging a stroller with them half the time, not for the baby but for all the baby stuff that they couldn't seem to leave at home.

 _An hour to go_ , Walt reminds himself. He doubts it is the same baby that Johnny had seen. This family has carried the awkward stroller up the stone steps to take their tourist shots and will no doubt be off somewhere else when the wind hits. _Well, no harm in warning them just the same._

"I don't want to panic anyone," the voice of authority says. It was a good opener. People who'd ignored his last attempt to clear the area were suddenly paying attention when he told them _not_ to panic. He approached the couple with the baby directly. "We're expecting a storm front through here shortly. No need to hurry. Plenty of time for a quick picture and all, but you want to be indoors and away from any windows well before four o'clock. Start looking for shelter at a quarter to. Got that? You wouldn't want that stroller to get caught in a microburst. Trust me."

The couple thanks him with no real interest and wanders off, but an older couple approach him anxiously. "It's really that bad? The weatherman just says thunderstorms."

"It's gonna get bad. Be indoors. Away from windows. We're sure. You wouldn't believe the weather-prediction tools we're getting our info from. You definitely want to be indoors." All true and yet Walt had a strangely guilty feeling like he was shining people on. It was so much easier to do this at home where _Johnny Smith the psychic said so_ actually carried weight with some people. 

Unfortunately, you couldn't get people to take shelter just by running through Chicago yelling, "You gotta get out of here! Everybody's gotta get out of here! There's going to be a big tornado right here at 3:57pm. I can't tell you how I know. I just know. Come on! You gotta go!"

Walt frowns in confusion at hearing his thoughts made audible. Like everyone, Walt turns and stares at the dark-haired man who is attempting with very little success to convince Chicago at large to seek shelter. He shouts and waves his hands and makes ineffectual shooing motions. Chicago remains unimpressed.

Meet Gary Hobson.

"It's not safe here!" Gary shouts at a young guy with headphones. Walt can hear just enough of the music leaking out to know that, even if the kid didn't already have permanent hearing loss, he still hadn't heard a word the other man says. "You!" Gary shrieks at a young woman just arriving at the bean with a stroller and several toddlers. "No strollers! It's not safe here!"

Gary means well.

No one other than the older couple next to Walt pay any attention to him. And they both turned back towards Walt. "Should we go to the Art Institute?"

Johnny hadn't seen any damage at the Art Institute, so Walt already figured that probably means it's pretty safe. Hardly any windows in a place like that to keep sunlight from damaging old artwork. 

The families with the strollers begins arguing with the other man. 

"Don't tell me what I can do," one says. 

"Are you that crazy psychic they interviewed Tom Skilling about? The one who thinks he can predict tornadoes?" another asks.

Gary stops mid-argument to read an article in his newspaper and then tells them, "Look, I never even heard of this Johnny Smith guy, but, believe me, in less than an hour the people who listened to him are going to be singing his praises and a lot of people are going to wish they'd paid more attention to him."

 _This guy,_ Walt thinks to himself, _will never get promoted._

Here's the thing about Gary. Every day for years now, he's started his morning by reading the newspaper. The odd detail is that it's _tomorrow's_ newspaper. He never asked for it or prayed for it or wanted it, but every morning a strange orange cat meows at his door and there it is. If Gary interferes, the stories in the paper change, which just occasionaly means he makes things worse, but most of the time he makes things at least a little bit better and sometimes a lot better. Chicago has no idea how much it owes Gary Hobson.

"Yes," Walt tells the older couple. "Go to the Art Institute and stay there until you hear the storm has passed." He raises his voice slightly. He doesn't shout and takes care to keep his voice pitched low. Slow and confident, that is a voice people pay attention to. Walt only raises his voice enough to make it clear that he is now speaking to everyone. "The National Weather Service has issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for this area. In addition to the storm front moving in, sudden dangerous wind gusts are expected, some possibly cyclonic in nature. Everyone should head on over to the Art Institute or any other location where you can get indoors _away from windows_ and stay there until the warning is lifted in approximately one hour."

Walt and Gary lock eyes. Walt thinks the other guy looks even more confused than Walt feels. "You think he's been talking to Johnny?" J.J. asks.

"Let's ask him." And so they do. 

Even frantic and, as far as Walt can tell, possibly mentally unstable, it is impossible not to notice that Gary is attractive, in a domestic boy-next-door kind of way. His hair looks like Sarah's, not the neat pixie cut she sports by day, but the wild bedhead she wakes up with that only Walt ever gets to see. Walt instantly has a soft spot for the guy.

Gary is flipping through his newspaper again and frowning. "Okay, okay," he mutters to himself, "okay, oh, oh, crap."

"Not okay, Gary?" an attractive black woman at his side asks. She stands still and calm, a stark contrast to the frantic white man flailing near her. Walt had taken her for a random member of the crowd and only just then realizes that they are together. Walt thinks she is looking off towards the buildings across the street. He is wrong. It is not that Walt is unobservant, but from his angle, he cannot see the white cane at her side. Her name is Marissa Clark. You'll like her.

"Oh, crap," Gary repeats, still reading his paper.

"Have you been talking to Johnny?" J.J. asks.

"Huh?" He looks up, distracted and befuddled. There is something of Johnny Smith in Gary's face, not in physical resemblance—he still reminds Walt more of Sarah, perhaps they descended from the same line of pixies way back when—but that faraway look of someone not fully focused on the here and now is definitely Johnny's.

"Johnny Smith," J.J. clarifies. "He has visions. He saw a tornado kill a baby in a stroller right here. You must have talked to him. And you believed him so you came here to warn everybody."

Gary frowns. "I never met this Smith guy. He was right, yeah, but I never talked to him. I don't know how he knew what he knew."

"Is the baby okay now?" Marissa asks. 

"Yeah, yeah, there's nothing at all about the baby now."

"So what's the 'oh, crap' for?" she asks.

"Now it's the L."

"The tornado is going to hit the elevated tracks?" Marissa asks. 

"No," Gary says, "it's the underground tracks."

"How can a tornado hit the _underground_ …?" she asks flatly. She isn't looking at Gary as they talk, but instead seems to be following him with her right ear. It is only then that Walt notices her white cane. Marissa has been blind since infancy. She has a guide dog at home, but he's getting on in age and is more or less retired these days. Marissa knows this area well enough to get along just fine without him and she worries the storm would frighten him.

"Excuse me," Walt interrupts, slightly frustrated. Not only are these newcomers largely ignoring him, but even J.J. seems to have lost his focus. More correctly, J.J. seems to have found a whole new focus.

The woman is, Walt has to admit, quite a looker. J.J. is eying her white cane with what Walt recognizes as the dangerous grin. It is the lopsided, plotting-something grin that always, always, _always_ leads to trouble.

Walt adds it up in a fraction of a second. She's beautiful. She's blind. The kid thinks he's got a shot. Fabulous, a tornado and puberty all in one afternoon. _Isn't his first crush supposed to be a girl with braces and a training bra?_ This woman is so far out of his league that, well, hell with it, props to the kid for trying.

Walt shakes his head and continues. "Hello. I'm Sheriff Walt Bannerman. If you haven't been speaking with Johnny Smith recently, can I hazard a guess that you have perhaps been speaking with—" Walt pauses briefly and scratches his head while deciding whether he is really saying this out loud or not "—an orange cat?"

And _that_ gets their attention.

"Hello. Nice to meet you. I'm Marissa Clark."

Gary is gaping at him. "You've seen the cat?"

"And this," Marissa continues, punching him in the arm, "is Gary Hobson. Say hello to the nice man, Gary."

"Yeah, hi, so this guy Smith, the cat gave him a paper too?"

"I'm J.J." J.J. says in a comically deep voice. Walt has to bite his index finger to keep from laughing out loud. He knows that voice. He has heard J.J. practice it repeatedly, except before, the phrase had always been, _I'm Batman._

"Nice to meet you, J.J.," Marissa says.

"Nice to meet _you_ , Marissa."

 _Oh, God_. Walt blinks away tears. _I will not laugh in my son's face. I will not laugh in my son's face. I will not laugh in my son's face._

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Gary says, "Nice to meet everybody, great. The cat?"

"Was at our hotel yesterday morning," J.J. says. He is still using his fake grown-up voice. 

Marissa smiles even more, not fooled for a moment. Walt is relieved she's playing along. "Busy cat."

"John touched the cat and had a vision," Walt explains to Gary who seems annoyed for no clear reason. "I guess you already know what that's about since you're warning everyone same as we are. You're a psychic too?"

"No. No, I just… I just know, y'know."

Walt shakes his head and doesn't try to argue.

"Gary," Marissa says. "You were saying? What about the L?"

Gary thumped the newspaper with the back of one hand. "Your buddy Smith is gonna start a panic in the tunnel. Pushing, shoving, it's going to be a stampede! There's not enough room on those platforms for that many people! People are going to end up on the tracks. More people die now than before." 

"Oh, no." Marissa frowns, but she looks more frustrated than distraught. Walt realizes he probably has the same expression on his face. _I guess that's what psychic friends do to you. It ain't over till it's over._

"Johnny is trying to save people," J.J. insists. He's slipped back into his normal voice in his indignation. "It's not his fault if somebody pushed somebody else."

* * *

They leave the Art Institute with several hours to spare. That had seemed like more than enough time, but after walking up and down the downtown area repeating their story to anyone who will listen, Sarah isn't so sure.

_If one single person dies because I had to drag my kid to see a bunch of old paintings, I'll never forgive myself._

Sarah and Johnny learn not to waste time with explanations. Telling folks a psychic is predicting the tornado only damages their credibility anyway. 

Not that they had a lot to start with.

A block away, a man with a hand-painted sign is telling everyone within earshot his life story, which includes, among other things, personal run-ins with the FBI and a time machine. "The bar has been set," Johnny jokes without a smile. "We have to sound less crazy than that guy."

"There's a storm coming," she tells a woman in a pink sweater.

"You need to be inside by ten to four," Johnny tells a businessman in a suit.

"Make sure you have your whole family inside before 3:57 and keep them away from windows," she tells a woman with two small children. "It's going to be a very bad storm."

Pedestrian traffic comes in waves with the traffic lights. Most people ignore them. Sarah has never felt so invisible before. The crowd acknowledges their existence only by the way it parts around them, flowing on its way.

A few times, someone responds, but only to say, "You're crazy" or "Oh, I know you don't believe that psychic _bleep_ Eric  & Kathy were talking about on the radio this morning" or more often some variation of " _Bleep_ off!"

"The good news is that they're apparently talking about this on the radio," Johnny says with a shrug after getting cursed out yet again.

"Are we doing _any_ good?"

Johnny looks around. Sometimes he has visions without warning, but at other times he is clearly seeking them out. He is in _seek mode_ now. He reaches out to a nearby storefront, at least the fourth shoe store they have walked past in fewer blocks, and his hand shakes as it often does when anticipating a vision. Sarah wonders if he realizes he does that. Is he honing in on some psychic energy field? Or is it just fear? After all this time, is he still afraid of his visions? His fingers finally make contact with the windows—a modern glass façade on a building built between the Great Chicago Fire and the Iroquois Theatre Fire, now remodeled to erase all character and safely free of vision-inducing history—and he lets go almost immediately. He looks at her and shakes his head. At first she thinks the answer to her _question_ is 'no' but as he paces around the street, touching other random objects, she realizes he only shook his head to indicate he had not triggered a vision.

He is just turning back towards her when a woman in ridiculously impractical high heels bumps into him. Despite the virtual stilts strapped to her feet, she recovers better than he does. Johnny reels and clutches dizzily to a lamp post.

_{{The color of the ambient light changes. No more sunlight, just the dull flicker of fluorescents. It's loud and echoey, the walls closing in. It's too crowded and there is a general disgruntled mood. A few people are angry and most are frustrated, but there is also an air of tired acceptance._

_"Man, I left work early to avoid the rush," a man in a formal business suit grumbles. "What is this?"_

_"Is there a game today?" a woman in last season's low-rise jeans wonders aloud._

_"I think there's a music festival?" an old man in a dirty hoodie suggests._

_"Bad day for it if that psychic is right," someone else out of sight laughs. The crowd laughs with him and the mood lightens slightly._

_In the middle of it all, a man in a white robe stands silently with his cross._

_Even with the added height of his heels, Johnny can't see over the crowd well enough for a clear look, but that's definitely a robed man with a wooden cross. A woman tugs at the elbow of his blouse and says, "Maybe we could take a taxi instead?" Johnny nods and together they turn towards the stairs, but there's no room to move._

_No one pushes. The newspaper will say there was pushing and shoving, but that's not what happens at all. More people come down the stairs. The platform overfills. As people bunch closer and closer together it becomes harder to keep your footing. The crowd begins to sway. Johnny catches his heel on a cracked piece of tile. Close enough together, people are like dominoes.}}_

"Johnny, what did you see?"

He stares at her wide-eyed. The sound of people and traffic downtown is actually quieter than the echoes of screaming in his head.

"What did you see?"

"I saw Jesus."

"You saw Jesus?"

"I saw Jesus," Johnny repeats. The vision was vivid, but surreal and his brain is oddly fixated on one detail. The cross was almost life-size (death-size?), but still definitely too small, like a prop in a play.

" _Jesus_ Jesus."

"I didn't get a look at his ID if that's what you're asking, but yeah."

For the first time, Sarah is personally frightened. She thinks she should be reassured that a childhood's worth of Sunday school lessons haven't gone to waste, but she's not really ready to meet Jesus today. "Jesus- _in-Heaven_ Jesus?"

Johnny ponders long enough that Sarah would be absolutely justified if she were to smack him upside the head. But the glimpse of the future leaves him confused and he needs a moment to assess the noise, the advertisements mounted on dirty tile walls and moreover the crowd of people not so much oblivious of, but indifferent to, the robed man and his too-small cross. It is large. It looks heavy. But not nearly large enough to be properly crucified to. There is a map on the wall declaring _You are here _, but it looks less like a map and more like a circuit board and Johnny can't quite get his bearings.__

__"I think," Johnny says hesitantly, "Jesus-in-the-Train-Station Jesus."_ _

__"Train station?" Sarah repeats._ _

__"Underground. Tunnel. It's—too crowded. People aren't _really_ pushing. Not on purpose. It's just too crowded and someone trips and it's like dominoes and it sounds like a train is coming and the third rail is already—"_ _

__"Got it!" Sarah interrupts before Johnny can overshare. "But… Jesus?"_ _

__Before Johnny can answer, a passing Chicagoan offers helpfully, "Yeah, I don't know what the _bleep_ that _bleep-bleeper_ 's _bleeping_ deal is. I think he's harmless though."_ _

__"So if I said I saw Jesus on the Jackson train platform, you wouldn't say I was having a psychotic break?" Johnny asks._ _

__"You and the whole _bleeping_ city, man. The first time I saw the _bleeper_ I was a little drunk. You better _bleeping_ believe that I was questioning my life choices." The man shrugs and adds, "So, points to the religious nut. That probably _is_ his _bleeping_ deal, yeah?"_ _

__Sarah frowns at her map. " _Which_ Jackson train station? There are two of them. Where do we find him?"_ _

__Johnny is unsure and tries to dredge up the details from his fading vision to no avail._ _

__The light changes and the helpful pedestrian walks away, but he calls back over his shoulder. "I saw Jesus on the Red Line once, but every other time I saw him was in the Financial District, so I'd try the Blue Line first. They connect underground so it's really same-same."_ _

* * *

Back by the Bean, it is a contest of wills between Walt Bannerman, who is smart and determined and already more than a little suspicious of Gary's paper, and Gary Hobson, who is perhaps not the sharpest crayon in the box but who is stubborn beyond reason.

Walt has an advantage that Gary doesn't know about. He's met Gary before. Not Gary specifically, but the spirit of Gary in the form of Johnny and Sarah. If Walt were a little more introspective and self-aware he would realize that Gary is in the center of the Venn diagram that defines his type. 

Gary has an advantage that Gary also doesn't know about. And it's actually the same point. Walt is _not_ introspective and in fact actively avoids thinking about things that make him uncomfortable.

The match point still goes to Walt as he fakes left and then dodges right and gets a quick look at that newspaper. The headline reads DEADLY PANIC DURING STORM and Walt quickly flicks his eyes up to date on the newspaper. Literally less than a second passes before Gary clutches the paper to his chest and out of sight, but it is enough.

Walt feels strange. He saw what he half-expected to see and yet he can't quite believe he saw it. It's one thing when Johnny Smith tells you that _he_ had a psychic vision of tomorrow's newspaper, but Walt just saw it with his own non-psychic eyes.

"So, where can people go besides the train tunnels?" Walt asks, not letting on how flustered he feels. "Makes sense that people would go there. They ride the train into work every day, it's going to be the first place they think of when the storm hits. Like people ignoring closer fire exits and all trying to get out the same entrance. We have to remind them of safer alternatives. So what are the alternatives?"

Gary is glowering at him, unable to forgive the invasion of the sanctity of the paper, so Marissa speaks up.

"Any underground level," Marissa says. "Underground parking garages, pedestrian tunnels, food courts."

"Food courts?" Walt repeats. Underground to Walt suggests musty basements and storm shelters. 

"Yes. Most of the food courts are underground. The Marshall Field food court, the one at Union Station, um…"

"The Thompson Center," Gary adds, relaxing somewhat.

"And Millenium Station," Marissa says. "That's the closest one."

"I wouldn't call that a food court yet," Gary argues. "It's mostly empty storefronts. All that's there is a Subway and a Cinnabon."

" _Smells_ like a food court," Marissa mutters under her breath, "but that's not the important point. There's more than enough room for the entire downtown to go underground, between the Pedway and parking garages."

Walt is dubious. They've only taken taxis around the city so he hasn't been paying that much attention, but he only saw a handful of parking garages. "The nearest parking garage is a couple of blocks that way?" Walt asks pointing west where he thinks he saw one.

"No, the nearest parking garage is _that way_ ," Gary says, pointing straight down. "You're standing on it."

Walt's eyes dart to the grassy lawn to their side. He had been fairly certain a moment ago that he was standing on solid ground. The plaza is even surrounded by small trees, which, now that Walt really notices, have turned their leaves over supplicating for rain. The sky still _looks_ clear, but Walt's inner Boy Scout agrees with the trees. It _feels_ like a storm is coming. "There's a parking garage _underneath_ the park?" he asks.

Marissa smiles at Walt's confusion. "They raised the city to get above the mud _and_ dug out basements and tunnels below that, so, _street_ level downtown is about two flights up from _ground_ level. Even the locals sometimes forget that. Pretty much every building downtown has two levels of basements. The _sub_ -basements are storage and maintenance, but the primary basements are mainly food courts and even storefronts."

"And DMVs," Gary says, aware that he's not really adding to the conversation.

"Marshall Field's has a basement shopping level _and_ a food court _and_ it's connected to the Pedway," Marissa says.

Walt checks his watch. There is still plenty of time, but it's definitely time to start thinking about where J.J. would be safest. 

"I need to get J.J. underground," Walt mutters. 

J.J. begins to protest, "Dad, I'm fine—"

"I can—" Marissa begins and then quickly rethinks her words. "Can someone help me to safety? I don't look forward to making a run for it at the last moment." She does her best to look fragile and defenseless. She even sweeps her cane tentatively in front of her despite the fact that she isn't even moving forward.

"You're fine," Gary snaps impatiently, rolling his eyes. 

Please do not let Gary's lack of chivalrous attention make you think less of him. Gary simply knows that Marissa is more than capable of taking care of herself.

J.J., on the other hand, does not know better and completely falls for it.

Walt rolls _his_ eyes as J.J.'s voice drops again to answer, "Absolutely, Marissa, you're safe with me."

"J.J., if you can help me to the Pedway entrance across the street, I can tell you how to get us to Marshall Field's." 

"Fantastic," Walt says. "Glad that's settled."

* * *

"I heard the train might be affected by the storm," Sarah says to Johnny, loudly and perhaps not in her most convincing _casual_ voice. They've only moved a block west onto Dearborn Street, but that's enough for a fresh audience.

"Uh, yeah, it's because, um," Johnny agrees, stuttering over an excuse that might sound plausible. "If the power goes out—"

Sarah cuts him off. _Why_ doesn't matter. "I heard the trains are going to stop in their stations. The entire system will be at a standstill and once you're behind…" 

"Oh, dude," a young man in a business suit says, "the trains stay slow for _hours_ after a delay."

"Yeah," Sarah agrees chummily. "Anyone who wants out of the Loop tonight should get out _now_ before the trains stop."

"Did she say the trains are going to _stop_?" a woman asks in horror.

"No, just a delay," the businessman says, "but that's going to make rush hour a nightmare."

"But the Metra is still running?" an unseen voice asks.

They can almost sense the ripple of anxiety down the sidewalk as people repeat the news.

Sarah and Johnny continue on their way towards the Jackson Blue Line station.

"Seriously?!" Johnny whispers to Sarah, absolutely indignant. "We've spent yesterday and today warning people to save their _lives_ and no one pays attention to us at all. This whole time we should have been warning them that it was going to inconvenience their _commute_?"

"We should get out of here before the trains stop running!" Sarah shouts cheerily. "I heard they're going to stop at 3:57PM!" 

Johnny gives up on the storm. "Yeah, they're doing some kind of maintenance on the trains and the last train leaves at 3:57PM. We should go grab a train _now_!"

As they walk down the street, Sarah abandons any pretext of maintaining a consistent story. "We should go to the movies until after the storm is over. I heard it's going to be awful. Rain! Hail!" (Johnny has foreseen none of these things.) "I just want to be indoors. It's a bad day to be outside."

Johnny fishes a five dollar bill out of his pocket and hands it to a panhandler on the corner. As they both have one hand on the bill—

_{{A shard of glass, nearly as large as the pane from which is broke, crashes onto the sidewalk, slicing the man's leg wide open. Blood spills out onto the sidewalk too quickly for it to be anything less than an arterial wound.}}_

—Johnny says, "Sir, there's a bad storm coming. I want you to take this money and go get yourself something to eat _inside_. Stay inside until the storm is over. Okay?"

The man rarely receives more than a few quarters at one time and gratefully accepts the bill. He folds up his cardboard sign and stands.

Johnny gives him a hand up and—

_{{Between the coins already collected and the five from the strange blond man, he's got enough for a Four Loko, _two_ hot dogs, _and_ a lottery ticket. Today is a good day. He is just counting out the coins for the convenience store clerk when there is a sudden howl of wind. A piece of debris smashes into the store's front window, but the tempered glass at ground level shatters into harmless rounded pebbles. The clerk looks more weary than shocked. He's already looking for the broom before the wind has even died down.}}_

—adds with a smile, "Tell all your friends. Storm's coming. Everyone should stay inside for the next hour."

* * *

"This way," J.J. says, attempting to lead Marissa to the southeast corner of East Randolph Street and North Michigan Avenue.

It's a bad corner and even sighted pedestrians get into trouble there. The entrance to the underground Pedway level is right there on the southwest corner, but there is no crosswalk on the south side of the intersection. To legally cross the street requires a circuitous triple-crossing. North, then west, and finally south again. Every single day, impatient pedestrians try to dash against the lights directly across. _Most_ of them make it.

" _This_ way," Marissa says, stopping him at the East Washington Street crosswalk. 

J.J., to his credit, does not argue. 

The light changes and Marissa steps forward before J.J. even says anything.

"How did you—?"

"It's not a superpower. You could probably do it yourself if you tried. Although we're _not_ going to test that today," she adds quickly, thinking, _Your father would kill me._ "Chicago is just a loud city. The traffic, the people, it's pretty easy to hear when everyone moves forward into the crosswalk."

"But what if they were jaywalking and everyone else around you was crossing on the red?" J.J. wonders.

"Jaywalk—?" Marissa repeats, confused as to what the problem would be. "If we all cross on the red, then we all cross on the red. That's still safer than being the only person crossing with the signal."

It should be noted here that there is only one driving law in Chicago that is ever enforced: _Keep traffic moving_. Every other traffic law is really more of a suggestion. That's not to say you _can't_ get a ticket for a specific infraction, but you can generally think of that ticket as Chicago police helpfully explaining to you exactly how you _bleeped_ up the flow of traffic. 

J.J. is the son of the sheriff and has been taught to patiently stand at a _Don't Walk_ signal without a single car in sight, waiting for the ants to cross. The chaotic neutral that is Chicago does not compute.

They arrive at the Pedway entrance, but Marissa hesitates. She dislikes the Pedway. It's useful in winter to avoid the snow and ice, but it's something of a ghost town otherwise. It was meant to be an underground shopping mall, but it still hasn't taken off, and while there is a gym and a dry cleaner and a handful of other businesses struggling to get by, it is mostly _For Lease_ signs and sleeping homeless. There is something particularly upsetting about accidentally waking up a homeless man by hitting him with your cane. It is simultaneously embarrassing and frightening.

The Pedway leads east to Millenium Station and the parking garage underneath the park they just left. West it leads to Marshall Field's Department Store and to the Red Line train. They can just as easily get to their destination going above ground and they'll encounter far more people along the way. There will still be plenty of time to get inside.

"The Pedway will be a great place to go when the storm hits," she tells J.J. with exaggerated volume. "The whole city could shelter down there." It's almost certainly not true, but only part of the population Marissa is worried about are the people currently milling around on the sidewalk.

"No one can hear you," J.J. says sulkily.

The handful of people standing closest did hear, but a bucket drummer on the corner makes even the traffic sound faint in comparison. It gives Marissa another idea.

She turns and approaches the drummer. The world for the most part veers out of the way of her white cane, but it catches on the wheel of a stroller. Marissa and the mother both simultaneously apologize and disentangle themselves. J.J. takes the opportunity to warn the woman about the high winds expected soon while Marissa has a similar conversation with the drummer.

As they turn back west down the sidewalk, they leave behind at least a handful of citizens aware of the approaching danger.

Danger comes in many forms, though.

Buried on page seventeen of the newspaper, where neither Gary nor Johnny noticed it, is a short blurb—not long enough to even count as an article—announcing the death of a blind pedestrian, killed crossing the street in front of a delivery truck. The short blurb manages to get most of the facts technically correct while in just a few short words getting the implication entirely wrong. Anyone reading the notice in tomorrow's paper will have the impression that the blind woman blundered into the truck's path. It will make no mention of the fact that the truck driver got lost, turned the wrong way up North Garland Court, opted to treat it as a shortcut and continued going the wrong way on a one-way street at full speed, pulling out at the end of the block without yielding to sidewalk traffic or even honking his horn to announce his approach.

It is J.J.—the biological son of psychic Johnny Smith, a man who had eerily accurate hunches long before the brain injury that knocked it into overdrive—who senses the truck. J.J. is veering out of his way to avoid the sidewalk grate even as Marissa walks confidently over it. To Marissa it isn't even an obstacle, but to J.J. it gives the illusion of a sheer drop that makes his stomach lurch. His hesitation puts him half a step behind her when he suddenly looks up and sees the truck.

J.J. clutches at the waistband of Marissa's skirt and jerks her back. The truck passes by so close and so quickly that she can feel the wind it makes and her cane is torn from her hand. The truck broadsides an Acura driven by a city Alderman. No one is injured, but the Alderman's involvement expands the newspaper blurb to half a column and the truck driver's incompetence is called out in detail.

" _Bleeping bleep-bleep_!" Marissa screams. "Where the _bleep_ did you get your _bleeping_ driver's license?! _Bleep_ it! Where is my _bleeping_ cane?"

J.J. is too stunned to answer.

Gary would be shocked too. No one has ever heard Marissa Clark say _bleep-bleep_ before. _Ever._ Once, when she was nine, she said _bleep_ and her grandmother washed her mouth out with soap. Literal soap.

The cane is broken and also wedged under one of the truck's tires. The truck driver and the Alderman are already screaming things even worse than _bleep-bleep_ at each other and J.J. just wants to get out of there.

"Okay, okay," Marissa says, getting herself under control again. "West."

"West?"

"The way we were going before, J.J. Just keep going west until we get to State Street."

J.J. Bannerman makes a terrible seeing-eye dog and Marissa stumbles several times just going the half block to North Wabash Avenue. After crossing the street, he tries to steer her inside the department store.

"No," Marissa says. "We're taking a detour. Go all the way to State."

J.J. walks an arm's length ahead of her with Marissa's hand on his shoulder and quickly learns that the most important thing to her is to announce where the uneven pavement is. 

"Crack," J.J. says, stomping his foot to indicate the location. "Uh, homeless guy," he whispers uncomfortably, leading her around what at first he'd mistaken for a pile of bags.

"Make sure you're inside before the storm," Marissa calls over her shoulder. "It's due soon. Tell everyone. Get down into the Pedway before the storm hits."

J.J. had been so preoccupied with Marissa that he'd forgotten to warn people about the storm for the last block. He tries to make up for it by calling out, "Storm warning! Everyone needs to get inside before the storm!" He thinks he can fool Marissa into thinking he is older (he can't), but even he knows that the people who can see he's just a kid aren't taking him seriously. 

J.J. is about to ask which direction they should turn now, but Marissa says, "Left," without prompting.

There is angry shouting up ahead and J.J. has to fight his instinct to duck inside the department store to avoid whatever the commotion is. 

"It's okay," Marissa says, sensing the tension in his shoulder. "Keep going."

It's not just angry shouting; it's amplified shouting. The phrase "burn in the everlasting fire" makes J.J. shudder, but he squares his shoulders and leads Marissa past the madman. Or at least he tries to. 

Marissa stops directly in front of the sidewalk preacher. "Have you heard about the storm?" she asks him.

"Psychics are in league with the devil!" the man says into his microphone.

The fact that this man has heard about Johnny's prediction encourages J.J. even as his words and tone frighten him somewhat.

Marissa is undeterred. "The National Weather Service has issued a warning. I'm sure that guy is just a fake who follows all the weather notifications so he can claim credit for a storm everyone knew was coming anyway. But the storm is real. You should get inside so your amplifier doesn't get damaged."

The man opens his mouth to retort, but then pauses, the threat to his microphone and amplifier sinking in. He tilts the microphone away from his mouth and asks confidentially, "A storm is coming _for real_?"

"Many sinners will be caught unaware," Marissa whispers in the same confidential tone. "You've only got about ten minutes left to get inside."

The man returns to his microphone, berating the pedestrians of Chicago on the wages of sin—which seem to involve equal parts homosexuality, consumerism, and cigarette smoking—and how the unholy must repent or be swept from the earth by God's coming storm. "Ten minutes until God's fury! Ten minutes and see the truth for yourselves! The storm will bring justice to the wicked! Repent _now_! You have ten minutes!" The man is already gathering his things even as he hectors passersby.

"I don't think my dad would approve of that," J.J. mutters.

"Your dad's a good man," Marissa says. "We should go inside now."

It is 3:46PM.

* * *

The sky is genuinely ominous now. The clouds have rolled in quickly with a yellowish haze that never means anything good. Walt and Gary turn south to chase tourists out of the Crown Fountain, but now even the city dwellers can sense the signs. The park clears without any prompting from Walt and Gary.

"What's the cat say now?" Walt asks.

Gary frowns. "That cat doesn't actually _write_ the newspaper," he says, adding in a quiet mutter, "I don't think." He pulls the newspaper back out of his back pocket and, out of habit, shields it from Walt's view with his body.

The headlines are all sports and politics and he has to hunt for a tiny sidebar about windows damaged by the storm.

"Are we good?" Walt asks.

"We're good," Gary says, squinting at the paper in confusion. Even if they've saved everyone, which feels impossible, surely a tornado would still make the front page, yet the article just says _high winds_ and _minor damage_.

"So this parking garage?" Walt prompts when Gary doesn't move.

Gary looks up from his paper and blinks. "Oh, right. This way." They dash half a block east and there to Walt's surprise, sure enough, is a set of stairs and an elevator leading down underneath Millenium Park.

"Hurry!" Gary yells at the people on the sidewalk. Gary likes to think his urging people to hurry makes them move faster, but it really doesn't. As the wind begins to howl, Walt and Gary and a dozen others dash to safety underground.

It is 3:52PM.

* * *

Johnny walks straight by the entrance to the Jackson Blue Line station and distractedly reassures Sarah that it's fine now. He's feeling a pull in a different direction. His visions are so overwhelming that Johnny no longer notices—has never really acknowledged to begin with—the premonitions that he's had all his life long before the coma that rewired his brain.

"I thought we were going to Jackson?" Sarah says uncertainly.

"Different dead president," Johnny mumbles distractedly.

It's like there is something just out of view that he's forgotten and if he just walks another block that way he'll remember why it's important.

They find themselves underneath the elevated Loop trains on Van Buren and Johnny ignores all polite rules of personal space to touch an elderly woman on the shoulder. She is small and frail and—

_{{The wind is as loud as the city, which has always been more than loud enough on its own. She clutches her book to her chest, disoriented by the strange turn in the weather. A chunk flies off an old diner sign on the corner and flies straight at her. No one hears her scream.}}_

—clutching a library book to her chest. 

"Ma'am, can we give you a hand?" Johnny offers. 

She recoils from the stranger and insists she is fine. Sarah intervenes before Johnny can scare the woman off. "Do you know where the library is?" Sarah asks. "I thought it was near here but I can't find it."

Far more willing to help than to be helped, the woman shows them the side door to the library and the three of them step inside.

At least the sign on the door said it was the library. They can't help but notice a total absence of books. There is an indoor fountain which seems especially out of place where you would expect them to want to avoid moisture. Johnny peers over the railing where a decorative opening in the floor reveals the basement level. "Are the books down there?" he wonders.

Instead the woman points at the escalator near the fountain. "Upstairs," she says.

Before Johnny can wonder further about the library's architecture, the doors fly open behind them and a number of people rush inside, muttering and cursing about the _bleeping_ wind.

It is 3:57PM.

Before the clock can even tick over to 3:58PM, it is already over. Only forty seconds of peak damage and the storm breaks apart, gusting down alleyways in the form of hundreds of disconnected, impotent swirls. It's not until 4:01PM that the first person pokes their head out of the library door to verify this. 

* * *

Marissa had planned to take J.J. to the food court and get him something to eat. He sounded very much like a boy with a lot of growing to do and it seemed like the best way to distract him from his troubles. But the food court is unusually crowded today, especially for late afternoon when the lunch crowd should have cleared out already, and without her cane, she's not comfortable pushing her way through.

"Would you rather have pizza?" she asks. 

"I love Chicago-style pizza," J.J. lies.

"Fantastic. My treat." Marissa reaches for her watch, flipping the glass front out of the way to tap the hands with her fingers. "I've got a bit after four. We should be all clear now, I think."

They return to street level and Marissa teaches J.J. the fine art of flagging down a taxi.

* * *

Gary and Walt and the others in the parking garage return to street level and everyone, except notably Gary and Walt, is laughing. 

"That _bleeping_ wind was _bleeping_ crazy!" is the general sentiment only, somehow, with even more _bleeps_.

"Let's survey the damage," Walt says, and he does so by striding forward toward the city, but Gary pulls out his paper and just starts reading. 

Walt doubles back when he realizes he lost Gary. 

"Well?" Walt asks. "How'd we do? We brought the body count down a little, yeah?" 

Walt is braced for bad news, but Gary just silently flips through the paper until Walt's patience is exhausted. He clears his throat in a menacing sort of way and Gary finally looks up.

"I got nothing," Gary says.

"We didn't do _any_ good?"

"No, I mean, I got _nothing_. No body count. No _injuries _even. At least not serious enough to make the paper. I've got just one article here about freak wind gusts blowing out windows and tearing down signs. Estimates of the repair costs. But… that's it."__

"That's it?" Walt repeats.

"That's it."

"A tornado hit downtown Chicago and it didn't even make the paper?"

"I don't think anyone noticed," Gary says, glancing around as the city is already slowly returning to normal. Debris is kicked out of the way. Windows will be boarded up within hours.

"How could no one _notice_?!" Walt repeats.

Gary shrugs. "People are busy. Things to do. People to mee— _BLEEP!!!"_

"What?!"

"I was supposed to pick up Brigatti's grandparents at the airport ten minutes ago! I forgot they were flying in from New York today! Toni's gonna kill me! I'm dead! I am so dead! I have to go!"

Gary is running for the Art Institute before Walt can stop him. There will be taxi cabs in front of the Art Institute. It's a tourist Mecca. He still has a chance to get to the airport before they get through baggage claim. (He has _no_ chance of getting to the airport before they get through baggage claim, but Gary functions on coffee and determination.) 

Walt gives chase. "Hey!" 

"You don't understand!" Gary yells back over his shoulder. "There are _angry Brigattis_ at O'Hare _right now_!"

"Your friend still has my kid!" Walt yells.

Gary spins around, still nearly dancing in hysterics and fishes out a business card which he throws at Walt before disappearing into a waiting taxi.

The card is for _McGinty's Bar and Microbrewery_.

* * *

As has already been established, J.J. is a terrible liar and Marissa doesn't believe he loves Chicago-style pizza any more than she believes he is a strapping young college student or whatever he thought he was passing himself off as, so she gets the kitchen to make him a burger instead.

It takes her a while rooting around behind the bar, but she finally finds her spare cane. She makes a mental note to order no less than three more as a replacement for the one she lost today. With Gary as a friend, days like this are more common than you would think.

She joins J.J. at his table. He has already eaten half his burger when Walt walks in the door. "Dad! Marissa has her own restaurant! And they make the _best_ burgers!"

"McGinty's is _Gary_ 's bar," Marissa says, listening for Gary's familiar footsteps behind Walt. When they don't come, "No Gary?"

"Apparently O'Hare is full of angry Brigattis, whatever that means."

"Oh, dear. Was that today? Oh, Gary, you have got to learn to note these things in your calendar." She _tsks_ to herself quietly.

"There's a calendar over there," J.J. says helpfully. Perhaps not so helpfully as, with a full mouth, it sounds more like _Ers a galenda ova ver_. 

Walt glances over and reads, "'Brigattis, O'Hare, 4PM' It's even circled in red."

"We tried," Marissa sighs. "Oh, well. Can I get anything for our other hero? Burger? Beer?"

Walt accepts both though dismisses the hero accolades. "I didn't actually do anything. I have no idea what happened, honestly."

Johnny and Sarah walk in the door and, on cue, Sarah says, "Okay, was it just me or was that really anticlimactic?"

"How'd you guys find us?" Walt asks and then immediately realizes it was a dumb thing to ask even before Sarah points at Johnny.

"Psychics. They're like homing pigeons."

"I smell burgers," Johnny announces, nudging Sarah out of his way to steal one of J.J.'s fries. "Is that as good as it smells? Correction. _Was_ that as good as it smelled?"

J.J. inhales the last bite of burger, belches, and asks, "Can I have another one?"

"J.J., really," Sarah chides her son.

"Seriously," Walt interrupts. "Johnny, what happened? You predicted disaster and it ended up being a couple of busted windows. You're never this wrong."

"I was _not_ wrong," Johnny says firmly, adding, "Burgers, all around!" to the waitress as he and Sarah sit down at the table. 

"Uh-huh," Walt grunts. 

Johnny shrugs. "You know how this works by now. I don't see everything. I can't conjure up visions on demand."

"Try," Walt says dryly. 

Johnny is reaching for the water glass the waitress has just set down, but his hand veers to the right almost of his own accord. "May I?" he asks Marissa, but she doesn't see his gesture and doesn't even realize the question is directed at her. He tries again, feeling awkward saying it out loud, but the impulse is strong. "Miss, may I touch your hand?"

She understandably hesitates and Walt remembers himself. "Sorry. Marissa, this is my wife Sarah and our friend Johnny Smith, the psychic you've heard so much about. This is Marissa. She… she knows the cat."

"The cat is hard to explain," Marissa says. Offering her hand, she adds, "Please to meet you, Johnny."

_{{Dana Bright's video only got slightly more views than the station's average, but all of those extra views were Chicagoans passing it one to another. Every person they talked to in the Field Museum repeated the story to at least two other people. A man they talked to in the elevator at the Sears Tower warned his coworkers to take their smoke break an hour earlier than normal. The morning radio disc jockeys couldn't stop making fun of the crazy psychic predicting an impossible tornado at an oddly specific time. Thousands of commuters scoffed at the idea and yet spontaneously decided to take late lunches and early dinners in the underground food courts. Famed Chicago weatherman Tom Skilling decided to review storm safety with his television viewers that morning while his audience was interested. Thousands of viewers decided to stay inside and keep clear of windows that afternoon. Many of the people they talked to at the Art Institute decided to extend their visit to the nice strong building for just an hour or two longer than planned. The homeless man was safely inside a convenience store and lived. They got the elderly woman into the library in time so she was never hit with debris. Walt and Gary warned everyone with a stroller to clear out of Millennium Park long before the storm hit. The woman in heels heard a rumor of train delays and took a taxi and no one fell onto the tracks. The bucket drummer repeated Marissa's warning and herded everyone at a busy intersection down into the Pedway while the wind blew through. J.J. Bannerman pulled Marissa Clark to safety when a truck nearly ran her over. And Marissa had the idea to enlist a religious nut with a microphone to spread the word. A businessman passing by heard the madman's rant and decided at the last minute to move his upcoming meeting to the inner conference room instead of the one with the lake view. Most of the windows in the city held strong. Those that shattered fell onto empty sidewalks.}}_

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it even make a noise?" Johnny asked, repeating the debate that only freshmen philosophy students seriously think about.

Walt quirks an eyebrow at him. It is similar enough to Gary's _no one noticed_ theory that Walt gets it. "If a tornado hits Chicago and no one is killed and it doesn't _bleep_ up traffic, was it even a tornado?"

Contrary to popular understanding, a visible funnel cloud is not synonymous with a tornado. A tornado is itself literally invisible. The cyclonic vacuum sucks up dirt and debris and it is this debris that makes a tornado visible at ground level. A small tornado may appear to break up as it crosses paved roads or parking lots without dirt to give it color, but the winds remain as strong and deadly as ever. 

In a decade, a new satellite will be launched into orbit with the ability to image storms as small and brief as the one that hit the city this day. This time around, however, no one saw it, no one died, and it didn't _bleep_ up traffic, so as far as the city is concerned it never happened.

Neither Gary Hobson nor Johnny Smith nor Marissa Clark nor the Bannermans will get the credit they are due for saving dozens of lives, but that's par for the course, really. A hero doesn't do it for the pat on the back or the thanks, but if he's lucky he at least gets a burger and a beer.

Unless he forgot to pick up Toni Brigatti's grandparents from the airport. In which case, Toni's gonna whup his _bleep_.

* * *

**THE END**

**Author's Note:**

> I typed up notes, including descriptions of some of the Chicago locations and real people of Chicago mentioned in this story. Check them out here: <https://oldtoadwoman.dreamwidth.org/62265.html>
> 
> Feed the plot bunnies: <https://oldtoadwoman.dreamwidth.org/62203.html> (You can honestly influence what I write next. I'm very easily distracted by bright shiny objects and even a single person commenting about what they'd like to read can inspire my muse.)
> 
> Feed the author's ego: kudos? comment? bookmark?


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